


One step further (maybe then I'll run to you)

by Andramion



Series: Prosthetic AU [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Crushes, Disability, Disabled Character, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 07:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andramion/pseuds/Andramion
Summary: Tsukishima Kei so does not have feelings for the shrimp. Even if he helps him out in the hallway. Even if he's coming along to Hinata's hospital appointment, it's just because he's already been forced into tutoring him afterwards.It's not like he likes him.Definitely not.





	One step further (maybe then I'll run to you)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the wonderful Run! Charity Zine, which is a multifandom zine created to raise money for Team for Kids before the Boston Marathon 2017!
> 
> I had an amazing time writing it, and I hope you will enjoy it!

There is no way Tsukishima Kei is going to cave in and agree to his request.

_No way,_ he tells himself as he pulls the straps of his school bag over his shoulder and walks out of the door at the back of his classroom, trying to ignore the now growling shrimp following him through the hallway.

“Tsukishima! You said you’d help me study!” He doesn’t glance down. Kei prides himself on how well he knows himself, even if he isn’t particularly honest. He knows that if he does, he’ll probably see that stupidly determined look on his face, or worse: a pout, and Kei isn’t planning on doing what Hinata says. _Again._ _No way._

He quickens his pace, because even if he knows he can’t _get rid_ of this pest, he can at least make his way to the club room as fast as possible. Maybe Yamaguchi will be there, or Yachi-san, and the idiot can ask one of them to help out instead.

“Hey! Don’t walk so fast! Hold up!”

Now that’s something he isn’t used to. Sure, whenever he walks with people – though it’s usually Yamaguchi and sometimes his mother – they tend to complain he walks too fast, that his strides are too big. It’s not like he can help being tall. But he’d never thought that Hinata – always energetic and athletic Hinata – would have trouble keeping up with him when he was dead set on it.

“What? Can’t keep up with your short legs?” he starts to taunt and he puts a hand up to his mouth to at least seem like he’s trying to cover the next words. “Oh, sorry, my bad. _Leg._ ” He feels like snickering, but keeps it in. Yes, he makes fun of Hinata all the time, but even though he’s pretty much gotten permission to even make jokes about the guy’s prosthetic leg, it still feels like it should be a touchy subject. Two years should have been enough time to get used to this, to have found the boundaries of how far he can go when joking about Hinata’s disability, but he can’t help being careful.

He hears a grunt before Hinata answers. “Well, yes actually. So if you could slow your pace for a minute.”

That gets Kei’s attention. He turns his head slightly, glances at Hinata from the corner of his eyes and sees him limp a bit when he tries to keep up, looking down at his left leg. Kei stops walking and turns to him completely now.

He looks through the hallway to make sure no one is close enough to hear him speak before he says anything.

“Is there a problem with your leg? Does it hurt again?”

He isn’t this considerate, not normally. But finding out a teammate – however annoying they may be – has a prosthetic leg by him being in excruciating pain, curled around the stub of his knee.. Kei still can’t shake the image, no matter how much time has passed already. He’d never seen pain like that. Sure, there was the occasional horror movie or hospital series, but that was all acting. He’d never seen a _real_ person in that much pain.

He has looked up some stuff about it since then – purely out of curiosity, he’d mumbled to himself, it wasn’t that he was actually worried about the guy – and it seems to him that prostheses are just a hassle. He can understand Hinata using one during the day, wanting to blend in, wanting the independence a wheelchair doesn’t give you in a public high school. But he can’t imagine how Hinata puts up with it all day, every day; on the way to school, during practice, classes and practice again before going back home. He can’t imagine how Hinata can try _so hard._

Curiosity has gotten the better of Kei a few times as he found himself staring at Hinata during practice, but that is all it is. _Academic curiosity._ And if he’s ever worried about Hinata, it’s out of duty to the team. Being aware of the players’ physical states is the least he can do as vice-captain.

It doesn’t explain why he moves over to Hinata now and holds his arm out slightly to offer him something to hold onto. Hinata’s hand finds it easily, his fingertips digging into the skin of his forearm slightly. He looks up with a smile.

“Thanks. Sorry for worrying you. No, it doesn’t hurt.” Hinata looks down again, swings his leg left to right. “It’s just that my good leg, ah I mean the sports one I wear during volleyball? That one is… well, let’s just say it’s in repair. I still have this regular one…” He pulls his trouser leg up and Tsukishima notices the colour is different from the one he’s seen before. More natural, more like Hinata’s skin tone.

“…but it’s kinda… heavy,” Hinata continues. “Compared to the other I mean. And it’s been a while since I’ve worn it for a longer period of time. It’s a little too short.” After wiggling his leg a few more times, he adjusts something through his trousers and stands up to lean on it again. Kei’s arm feels weirdly light when Hinata lets go. “Okay, I’m good.”

Kei starts walking again, slower this time. Hinata keeps up with him, follows along quietly for once. It isn’t until they are climbing up the stairs to the club room and he sees Hinata struggle that Kei speaks again.

“Can you even practice with your leg like that?” he asks. Though he doesn’t look, he notices Hinata’s shrug all the same.

“I don’t know. Not really. Ah, but I can study signs or something. Oh!” Kei feels a tug on his sleeve and grumbles. Another one of Hinata’s annoying habits. “I was talking about studying! Please help me study for midterms!”

“I said I’d only do it that one time, didn’t I? Ask someone else.”

Hinata’s mouth turns into a pouty little thing that has Kei’s stomach twisting not entirely unpleasantly.

“Well, you’ve done it every time since, so what’s the difference now?”

“Ask someone else,” Kei repeats, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He knows Hinata has a point. He realises what his behaviour must look like from someone else’s point of view but… it’s better to keep Hinata at an arm’s distance. It’s hard enough to…

He’s so not thinking about this right now.

With a shrug to loosen his tensed-up shoulders, he opens the door to the club room and steps in. Within seconds, two of the first years successfully separate them, filing around Kei with a quick “Hi, Tsukishima-san” to get some attention from their favourite senpai.

Yamaguchi sidles up to him just as he’s taking off his uniform, pokes his elbow into Kei’s side like he’s taken to doing lately.

“What was that just now?” he asks and Kei closes his eyes for a second before he turns to look Yamaguchi in the eyes.

“He needs tutoring,’ Kei explains. He grabs his shirt and sweater, only to discard the latter again. It’s getting warm lately, and it’s been over a week since he’s last worn his sweater for more than a few minutes at the start of practice.

“Again?” Yamaguchi laughs. His shoulders are shaking a little when he ties his hair back. “And he’s gone straight to you as well, amazing.” When Kei looks over his shoulder to where Hinata is chattering away with the underclassmen, he can feel Yamaguchi’s eyes on his face.

“You’re doing it, right?”

“I’m not.”

Yamaguchi snorts.

“You’re so going to cave.”

After a little shake of his head, Yamaguchi claps his hands and Kei knows he timed it like this just to make sure Kei couldn’t utter another denial. “Okay, everyone, out to the gym, we’re starting in a few!”

Kei glares at him, just because, but Yamaguchi simply smiles back until all the underclassmen have filed out of the room. It’s nice that Yamaguchi’s confidence has grown so much in last couple of years, but sometimes Kei misses the times Yamaguchi would let him get away with denying himself.

“He’s not playing, by the way,” Kei tells Yamaguchi on the way down the stairs, watching as Hinata hobbles down in front of them. Now that Kei knows, it’s so obvious Hinata’s having trouble with his leg. He gestures vaguely when Yamaguchi looks at him. “Stuff with his leg apparently.”

“Oh! He told me he had to go to the hospital soon, I didn’t know it was today. Hold on.” Without any further explanation, Yamaguchi jogs away from Kei to catch up with Hinata. They talk quietly, easily, smiles on their faces and open body language.

And Kei lets himself wonder, just for a little bit, what it would be like to have that too.

* * *

“You know,” Yamaguchi says during a break in practice, when he and Kei are standing a little ways away from the others with the excuse of a captain-vice captain chat, “I don’t think it would be that bad to let him know how you feel.”

Kei nearly lets his water bottle drop. Catching it purely by reflex, he wipes his mouth and his eyes narrow a little as he looks at his friend.

“You know, that’s really none of your business.”

Yamaguchi just raises an eyebrow at that, and Kei refuses to let out a sigh, but he feels it all the same.

“Sorry, habit.” He looks up at the ceiling and breathes in deeply. “I don’t know. It’s not going to end well anyway.”

“Tsukki…” Yamaguchi’s voice sounds like he’s trying not to come across as pitying, and while Kei appreciates the effort, it’s not really working.

“Or worse,” Kei says, conjuring a smile on his face, “he could _accept_ and then I’m _that guy_ who’s dating the shrimp.” He’s a little proud of the sudden loud laugh Yamaguchi lets out and when everyone turns to look at Yamaguchi and Yamaguchi colours bright red, Kei feels a little satisfied as well.

“Okay, but no, seriously.” Yamaguchi sets his bottle down, which means break’s almost over, and Kei quickly downs some more of his water. “I think it would work out. You’re friends now, he wouldn’t be a jerk about it.”

“I’m fine,” Kei insists, and when Yamaguchi is about to say another thing to try and change his mind, he adds: “Just let me wallow in my poor life choices and slight existential crisis until my feelings go away and that’ll be that.”

Then, he walks over to the rest of the team and tells them to get back to practice. Two can play at that game.

Or so he thinks. He really doesn’t see Yamaguchi’s remark coming.

“Tsukki said he’d tutor you after school today, Hinata,” he tells him in passing, before running up to Kageyama, who’s already back on the court with a ball in his hands.

Kei just stands there for a bit, looking at his best friend, and wonders when and how he learnt to be so sneaky. When he does turn, he sees Hinata looking up at him.

“Thanks, Tsukishima!” he says, thousand-watt smile on his face and eyes glittering in reflection of the overhead lights.

Kei wonders if there has ever been a possibility of a future in which he didn’t give in.

“Sure, don’t mention it.” He hangs around a little longer, not used to walking onto the court before Hinata. “Yamaguchi said you have to go to the hospital today.”

He isn’t watching Hinata anymore, but he can see him move at the edge of his vision. The toeless shape of his prosthetic foot draws Kei’s attention, but he tries his best not to stare.

“I’m getting my new prosthesis fitted. They used this plaster stuff to make a mould of my knee and said that this new technology they have would make it more comfy too. Oh, and better for activity! Ah, you probably meant.. I mean, I’ll just cycle over to yours after, it shouldn’t take too long.”

That surprises Kei. He didn’t realise Hinata had still cycled to school, his current prosthesis being as it is.

“Your family isn’t taking you?”

“They had other stuff, it’s fine. It’s just a fitting. They already come along to every other appointment.”

Kei hums, understanding that reasoning. As a kid, he’d never liked it when his parents had to take time off of work to look after him when he was sick. He can imagine feeling a little frustrated at having to have your parents do so much for you.

“What about His Majesty? He went with you before, right?”

“He’s got Little Tykes’ on Mondays.”

“Right.” For a moment, he manages to hold himself back, to follow that regime of _avoid, annoy, push away and – most of all – do not indulge_ , but then he says it anyway. “I can go with you.”

Kei doesn’t stick around to watch Hinata’s face light up again, predictable as Hinata is. He just mutters a “since I’m tutoring you right after anyway” before he walks back onto the court, ignoring the amused look Yamaguchi is giving him.

* * *

Hospital waiting rooms have a way of getting on Kei’s nerves, but today he’s more on edge than he normally is.

It might – maybe – have something to do with the way Hinata’s arm had snuck around his waist as Kei cycled both of them here on Hinata’s bike, with the way Hinata had been so warm against his back, with the way his voice had sounded when pressed so close. Maybe.

In any case, the crying kid in the corner is probably not doing it on purpose, but Kei just wishes she would stop the wailing. Across from him is a father sitting with his nose-picking son, to the right is a middle-aged woman with an arm poking out of her bag – which would have been disturbing if Kei hadn’t known they were probably all there for something to do with prostheses. And right next to Kei, Hinata is shuffling in his seat, unable to stay still as always.

Luckily, it doesn’t take long for a nurse to call Hinata’s name. The moment she does, Hinata jumps to his feet and stumbles. Kei is quick enough to catch his elbow and keep him from landing on his face once more, but he’s surprised at the expression that passes Hinata’s face before it’s covered up by a grateful smile.

Hinata cheerily greets the nurse by name, and it’s returned in like. Kei follows Hinata in, ignoring the weird look the nurse gives him at his entry.

“Ah, this is my friend from school!” Hinata tells the nurse, and he quickly explains why Kei is there to begin with. Kei tries to stuff down the little thrill he feels at Hinata calling him his friend rather than a teammate as he’s directed to sit in a chair at the side of the room. Hinata hops onto the elevated bed in the middle of the room, his legs dangling off the side.

Without needing any directions, Hinata pops the valve on his prosthesis loose, releasing the mechanism that holds it in place. He sets the leg down on the bed next to him and massages his residual limb through the sock for a bit, while the nurse pulls out a cardboard box and opens its lid to take out several things she lays down on the table next to the bed. Then she pulls out a sleek, shimmery black leg prosthesis, streamlined and with red and white stripes on the side and Hinata lets out a soft coo.

It sounds as though he hadn’t meant to make the sound, and when Kei shifts his gaze to Hinata, he sees him leaning forward as far as he can without falling off the bed, mouth open and eyes wide in quiet amazement.

“Isn’t it pretty?” the nurse asks, handing the prosthesis over to Hinata, who just studies it in silence, his right hand almost caressing the material as he gently moves his fingers over it.

Then, he suddenly bursts, as though it was too much to keep the sound in.

“It’s so cool! Tsukishima, look! It’s so cool! Look at the stripes!” Kei supresses the urge to smile, to move closer. “Look, it matches my volleyball shoes! It’s so sporty!”

“It’s cool,” Tsukishima answers, purely because he knows Hinata won’t stop until he gives at least some reaction. He doesn’t want to tell Hinata how much this new leg suits him, how glad he is to see Hinata smiling so much, so happily. His stomach feels weird, light, and he wishes he’d feel gravity the normal way again.

“Now,” the nurse says, jumping into the conversation at precisely the right time, before Hinata can go on voicing his excitement, “since this prosthesis comes with a different attachment mechanism than you’re used to, there’s a couple of things you’ll need to do differently.”

Hinata nods and Kei curiously listens in on the instructions the nurse gives him. He remembers most of it from the articles he’s read and finds himself nodding along with the nurse’s pointers. Make sure to still use some cream beforehand to keep the skin hydrated. Wear this new liner (polyurethane, if Kei recalls correctly) rather than the copolymer one he has now, then pull the sleeve up over it.

Halfway through her explanation, she starts showing Hinata how it works, letting him do all the preparatory work himself. After that, she sets the prosthesis upright and looks at Hinata.

“Then you set your limb in the socket. Let me give you a hand.”

Kei bites his lip at her words, trying not to laugh while she puts her arm around Hinata’s back to help him up enough so he can slide his leg into the socket. The assistance is probably a little unnecessary – Hinata does it by himself often enough, Kei’s seen him do it during training camp after all – but just the fact that the prosthetics nurse is offering _a hand_ is so morbidly funny that Kei has a hard time keeping himself in check. He’s been in a weird mood all day.

“So then, yes, exactly, so you pull the inner socket sleeve – that’s the short one – that one up first,” she continues, watching Hinata’s fingers at work and pointing at everything she’s talking about. “Then the outer sleeve. Yes, like that, all the way up your thigh. It’s a little long, I know.”

She leans back and Hinata watches her, awaiting further instruction.

“Almost done,” the nurse says, reaching for something on the table again and showing it with a flourish. “All you need is the vacuum pump!”

Kei can’t see it very well from where he’s sitting, but he’s guessing there’s some sort of toggle on the prosthetic that she attaches the pump too. He can hear the little hiss the pump gives as it sucks a vacuum between the outer sleeve and liner, firmly attaching the prosthesis to Hinata’s residual limb.

“And that’s it!”

“Can I lean on it?” Hinata asks and the nurse gestures for him to go ahead. With careful movement, Hinata sets his first step with his new leg, and a smile makes its way onto his face again as he walks around the small room.

“It feels so natural!” he exclaims, looking surprised and amazed. “They told me vacuum attachment would like, make my leg move less inside the socket but I didn’t think it’d feel like this!” He moves onto his toes and back with his right leg, seeing how well he can move his prosthesis. Then, out of nowhere, he jumps up and moves his hands as if he’s spiking. “Oh, I’m totally gonna beat you at volleyball now, Tsukishima!”

“So you’re right-legged?” the nurse remarks, looking at the foot Hinata had used to push off of the floor and Kei can’t help the snort he lets out. Hinata’s head turns immediately, his gaze holding Kei’s with a question in his eyes and Kei lets his laughter out for real now.

“Yeah, he’s _right-legged_ ,” he says, waving a hand to gesture towards Hinata’s leg. He presses a hand to his mouth and holds the other against his stomach. “What a sharp observation.”

Kei can hear Hinata snicker too, though, and it just serves to make his whole body feel even lighter. He loves it when he successfully makes Hinata laugh at his rude jokes, loves the sound of that slightly disbelieving laughter, the sight of Hinata biting his lip and trying not to show how amused he is at something he’d never say himself.

“I’m sorry,” Hinata says, “my friend is kind of a jerk.”

He doesn’t look sorry at all.

* * *

They walk, the first part of their way to Kei’s house.

“I love how this leg feels,” Hinata had said as they had gotten out of the hospital, when Kei had come back from the bike stalls with Hinata’s bike. “I don’t want to wait to use it.”

So far, Kei hasn’t asked the questions that he’s been aching to ask for ages.

_What’s it like, how do you do it, how do you put up with it, how do you never let it get you down?_ The first question is normal enough, but he feels bad for thinking the others. He doesn’t want to make Hinata think he thinks he should feel bad for being disabled. It’s not like Kei believes Hinata can’t keep up with the rest of them. He can, he’s proven it time and again, but ever since Kei started paying attention to him… He sees the exhaustion, he has seen Hinata’s face scrunch up in discomfort after a particularly taxing practice. He honestly doesn’t know why Hinata puts up with it.

He’s shaken from his thoughts when Hinata touches his shoulder and tugs at his sleeve.

“You can ask, you know,” he tells him, and Kei wonders when he became the one observed. He averts his gaze, looks out across the river next to the long, narrow path they’re following.

“I didn’t mean to,” Kei mutters, but having been given a free pass, he wants to ask, he wants to _know_. More about Hinata’s prostheses, more about Hinata’s experiences. Anything about Hinata really.

But it’s not like he can just come out and tell him that.

So he settles, and only asks one of the many questions swirling around in his head.

“What was it like? When you got your first prosthesis?”

He sees Hinata’s eyes widen, his mouth going slack for a second before his lips pull up into a smile again. Hinata breaks eye contact as he looks down at his leg for the next few steps.

“The first time, huh. Hmmm.” He seems to be thinking, and Kei readjusts his grip on the bike’s handles. He doesn’t know if it’s okay to ask this, doesn’t know whether he’s gone too far, asked too little, pressed too hard.

“You should know,” Hinata starts, “I’ve always been a pretty active kid. I mean, I don’t remember _that_ much from when I was that little, but I was always moving, running around, playing outside, those kinds of things. I mostly just remember flashes of it, you know?”

He looks up, eyes on the soft clouds passing overhead.

“The smell of the grass,” he continues, “wide open fields, the wind in my hair, those sorts of things. Then the accident happened and I was.. tied to my bed, at first, then confined to a wheelchair for a while. It wasn’t bad, and I’m not saying wheelchairs are either, but.. it just wasn’t for me, you know?”

When Hinata turns to him again for a second, Kei swallows thickly and nods.

“I got my first prosthetic leg when I was nine, but I was still growing so hard that it had to be.. adjustable, easy to make it fit when I outgrew it, so… that meant nothing too fancy, nothing that was as good to move in. Then, when I stopped growing in primary-”

He stops suddenly and keeps quiet for a second, turning to Kei. “Will you believe me if I change that to middle school?”

Kei snorts and smirks. “No, but I’ll keep your secret, if that helps.”

“You’ll tell Yamaguchi, though, right. It’s okay I guess.”

“I wouldn’t tell him if you really don’t want me to, though.”

Hinata’s eyebrows shoot up and he laughs out loud. “I still can’t get used to you just being normal honest with me instead of painfully so. Where was I?”

“You stopped growing.”

“Right.” Hinata picks up the pace a little and Kei adjusts to keep up again. “I stopped growing, and I convinced my parents to get me a really good, really great and fancy prosthesis. I feel a little bad about it now, but.. I was eleven, so, I asked for it anyway.”

“There’s this long stretch of road close to our house, completely flat and only sees like, ten cars a day. So I got my new prosthesis, I went there and.. I could just _feel_ it and I started walking and the sun was shining and I _ran_. I _ran_ , and it was the greatest thing, Tsukishima. The energy I could put into it, the burn in my thighs, the breeze on my cheeks, I… I don’t know.”

There’s a blush on Hinata’s cheeks by now, as though he’s a little embarrassed to tell this story. Kei doesn’t know how many people know this, know how Hinata felt back then, but he desperately wants to be the only one to know this moment of elation.

“I think it’s the best memory I have,” Hinata admits and Kei stops walking.

“Let’s do it now,” he says, and Hinata stops too, turns around to look at him.

“Do what?” Hinata asks, and Kei is so overwhelmed that Hinata would trust him, a friend so new, as strained as their relationship sometimes is, with his best memory, that he has to swallow his feelings down again before he can speak.

“Run.” He doesn’t suppress the smile tugging on his lips, lets himself show his sincere happiness for once. “Let’s run, Hinata,” he says, and he feels like he’s asking him to kiss him, to be together, like he’s confessing all of the things he’s been trying to keep inside after the way Hinata made running sound like such an intimately wonderful thing before. “Let’s run.”

Without taking his eyes off of Hinata, Kei waits, waits for an answer, for a movement, and it comes when Hinata nods slowly, then again, faster, and with a laugh he sets off, running ahead.

Faster than he thinks he could have reacted before, Kei swings his leg over Hinata’s bike and cycles after him, watches Hinata pump his legs at a speed Kei hasn’t seen him going before, letting out peals of light, elated laughter as his steps get bigger, as the wind ruffles his hair.

Out on the river, Kei can see Hinata’s reflection, and with the ripples on the water it almost seems as though he has wings, a crow gliding just over the water.

Maybe, Kei thinks, maybe after they’ve run all the way home, after they’ve calmed down and studied and Hinata’s getting ready to sleep over once again because it’s too late to go home anymore, maybe then he’ll reconsider letting Hinata know how he feels after all.

 

Art by the wonderful Pixie, you can find the original post [here on tumblr](http://bibbidibobbididette.tumblr.com/post/159876899016)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave me a comment, it would really make my day and fuel me to work hard!


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